Kathy Hudson's On Walnut Hill: The Evolution of a Garden is one of those rare garden books that does far more than tell the story of a showcase garden. Hudson's spare prose, combined with award-winning landscape photographer Roger Foley's lush photos, paint a verbal and visual history of this spectacular garden, which utterly transformed a sunny hillside near Baltimore over the course of 46 years.
It helped, of course, that the young couple who bought the house and grounds in 1969 -- and did all the work themselves for years -- was able, later, to fund what started as a dawn-to-dusk, weekend hobby into what ultimately became their life's passion and work.
It also helped that early on they began working with a European garden designer who was one of the pioneers advocating the replacement of staid, static rectangular patches of lawn and flower beds with sumptuous curvilinear sweeps of perennial plantings and ornamental grasses.
Designer Kurt Bluemel laid out an overarching plan for A.C. and Penney Hubbard's sunny, two-acre site: an evergreen background, a middle ground of shrubs like rhododendrons, viburnums and azaleas, and a foreground of annuals and perennials. Just as important as the plantings, however, were Bluemel's stunning hardscape plans -- the low, dry-laid stone walls that curved throughout the property, and his meandering pathways, large enough for two people to walk side by side, conversing.
A rock-lined fountain wall with multiple cascades of water, the rough, wide stone stairs that curve and twist up the hilly site, the seemingly random but perfectly placed stone accent pieces -- all add to the tamed wildness of the garden's appearance. Novice gardeners -- like those who find themselves regularly moving new acquisitions until both plant and gardener are happy -- can take heart here: when Bluemel announced that a rock-lined pool would be sited where the Hubbards already had a stand of conifers, the trees were dug out, moved to a temporary holding bed, and re-planted after construction.
Unlike most garden books, On Walnut Hill serves up a seven-season year that mirrors the actual stages of garden life: one winter, one autumn, but two springs (early and late), and three summers (early, midsummer, and late). Foley has chronicled each of those seven seasons in long, evocative photo essays.
As testament to the strength of the Hubbards' garden as well as to Foley's photographic eye, each of the seven seasons delights and beguiles. Foley's winter photos -- the curve of a snow-covered dry-laid stone wall overlooking a distant valley; an Asian sculpture with a ruff of snow on a terrace wall; the riotous bark of a leafless, rust-colored paperbark maple -- are every bit as captivating as his spring and summer shots -- the glory of tiny white bleeding heart mingling with enormous Hosta "Big Daddy;" a granite column seemingly strangled by electric purple clematis trailing across a blue spruce; towering yellowed Allium "Mount Everest" rising out of a green sea of bottle brush Amsonia hubrectii.
Each of Foley's seven photo essays is introduced by a prose poem in Hudson's lean style that clearly reflects decades of her own gardening life. One has to spend endless hours in endless gardens to understand how "After snowfall comes the deepest stillness of the year," or to describe those early spring miracles, "to see again ... coiled fern fronds and scrolled hosta leaves pushing through the earth."
Perfect for giving at any time of the year, On Walnut Hill will drive winter-bound gardeners to their seed catalogues. All the rest of the year, they'll be driven outdoors, in hope, and brimming over with ideas.
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Reviews with images
A spectacular horticultural pièce de résistance...
Kathy Hudson's story “On Walnut Hill’ tells the story of a couple’s passion to embark on a quest to transform a two-acre hillside into a beautiful garden …a most unusual garden. The book unfolds with stunning photographs of trees, shrubs and flowers. The garden began in 1969, when A.C. and Penney Hubbard claimed the hillside earth on Walnut Hill in Ruxton, Maryland. Collaborating with renowned plantsman, the late Kurt Bluemel. The result, still unfolding is a spectacular horticultural pièce de résistance!Bettina CarrawayBaltimore, Maryland
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Reviewed in the United States on January 7, 2016
Reviewed in the United States on March 19, 2020
Bettina Carraway
Baltimore, Maryland
A spectacular horticultural pièce de résistance...
Reviewed in the United States on March 19, 2020
Kathy Hudson's story “On Walnut Hill’ tells the story of a couple’s passion to embark on a quest to transform a two-acre hillside into a beautiful garden …a most unusual garden. The book unfolds with stunning photographs of trees, shrubs and flowers. The garden began in 1969, when A.C. and Penney Hubbard claimed the hillside earth on Walnut Hill in Ruxton, Maryland. Collaborating with renowned plantsman, the late Kurt Bluemel. The result, still unfolding is a spectacular horticultural pièce de résistance!Reviewed in the United States on March 19, 2020
Bettina Carraway
Baltimore, Maryland
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Reviewed in the United States on September 23, 2017
Reviewed in the United States on November 13, 2017
Reviewed in the United States on November 13, 2017
Reviewed in the United States on September 7, 2017
